Life makes no sense. However, to be able
to live, we human beings need to believe that it does. And so we invent art,
science, politics and religion: diverse forms of alleviating (in the plane of
the imaginary) the absurdity of having been born. What's more, the world has
now duplicated: we no longer live only in the universe of atoms but we are also
constantly in the virtual world. We are amphibious beings.

The emergence of the virtual world has
also made us ubiquitous: we are neither here nor there, but everywhere at once.
In this amphibious, ubiquitous and eternal world (eternal because time has
concentrated itself into the instant) Twitter functions like a collective
brain. It is not only the brain of our collective existence but rather it
reconfigures our whole mind. We think, dream and desire according to how the
spatial limit of a tweet's 140 characters has reformatted us and according to
the vertiginous velocity at which the Timeline tends to move at peak hour.

Only in the marvellous world of Twitter
is the appearance of an intellectual adventure such as @ElTopoIlustrado
possible ['The Illustrated Mole' would be its literal - and awfully ambiguous -
English translation]. El Topo Ilustrado is a virtual being that - in the world
of atoms - has two heads and four hands. This virtual artist is fruit of the
collaboration between two people that met on Twitter. Only under the sign of
the amphibian is it possible to view the work of this unique artist,
continually engendered by two.

Like a coin, the work of El Topo
Ilustrado has two faces: a verse or phrase (maximum 117 characters) and a
drawing (the link to it occupies the remaining 23 characters). All the phrases
are written by Tobías Schleider (who on Twitter is the virtual character
@ElTopoErudito) and all the images are by Cristian Turdera (on Twitter,
@cristianturdera). Temporally, the phrase always precedes the drawing, with
which the observer might think that the drawing 'illustrates' the phrase.
Nothing is more untrue: by a strange alchemy, the phrase-drawing relationship
in the works of El Topo Ilustrado is
poetic. Each element has a metaphoric relation with the other, to the point
that that the phrase without the drawing (or equally the drawing without the
phrase) says something other than what can be read when they are viewed
together.

How has this amiable monster achieved
such a wonder? Adding metaphor to metaphor, without shyness. The art of El Topo
Ilustrado is of such metaphorical subtlety that we are never totally clear what
it says, because each artwork is only understandable within its own limits, a
universe created by the artwork itself. There is always a plus of meaning and
mystery that no rationality can enclose. Without the drawing, the phrases are
mere tweets (beautiful and enigmatic though they are) that @ElTopoErudito could
write on an inspired day. Without the phrase, the drawings appear sketches for
a future artwork by Cristian Turdera. Each part, individually, appears to be in
larval state. From these two solitary entities a work emerges only when drawing
and text copulate.

It is no coincidence that the work and
the very existence of El Topo Ilustrado is fruit of collaboration. That which
El Topo Ilustrado has managed to create is the perfect work of the work of art
of the future: never fixed, always in process. This virtual artist, who only
lives in Twitter (although can emerge unspoiled, as we see in this exhibition,
in the world of atoms) manages to achieve the dream of the historic vanguards
(in particular, the Constructivists), who aimed to make the process of aesthetic
production the work itself, without ever achieving this.

This exhibition of El Topo Ilustrado
brings to light the process of production of a work that is itself a constant
process of production: it is poetry in a state of incandescence. That moment in
which we come to believe that life makes sense.